The health benefits from male circumcision outweigh the risks, says the American Academy of Pediatrics in its latest guidelines on the controversial procedure published Monday.

Are you serious? Membership in that group is, I guess, the thing that's most strongly correlated with making money off the ritual. Hence the information content of their statement is close to zero. I would put them in the category of every other group that's about to lose an existing source of income and trying to prevent that. In terms of bias, that's where the most aggressive lobby groups are to be found.

I read the explanation when I first saw the video. I'm no rememberator, but I call it explosive rebound. Some portion of the explosive force pushed downward through the can, hitting the solid floor beneath and then reflecting enough of the remaining energy back into the can causing it to lift off the ground like it did.

The experts agree that doing nothing is not an option at this point. "The problem is entirely soluble, and coral reefs can be saved through concerted effort over this and the following two or three generations," said Kaufman. "There is absolutely no excuse for failure to do this, and if we do fail our generation will forever be remembered for unimaginable, unforgivable stupidity and sloth."

If that happens, then truer words were never spoken. I can't help but think our last few generations have done a damn good job of fucking over the planet.

It is interesting to note that it wouldn't take that many qbits to compute the universe. On the order of a thousand. It's almost recursive in that it appears the universe is basically quantum and quantum computers of modest size could in theory compute the universe.

It is interesting to note that it wouldn't take that many qbits to compute the universe. On the order of a thousand. It's almost recursive in that it appears the universe is basically quantum and quantum computers of modest size could in theory compute the universe.

No, quantum computers of modest size can simulate quantum systems of modest size. So maybe, maybe you could simulate a classical version of the universe (of course there is no such thing) but you can't get most of the answers out (you only get to measure once). To simulate a universe of qubits, you need a universe of qubits. Or more time. What you can get rid of is the exponential slowdown, which is huge.

Okay, while we're at it (and after 5 hours of C++ template metaprogramming insanity), let's pose another question: If we were simulated by a computer, how would we find out what its characteristics are? We would have to measure it in some way, but until we do that, every possible computer of sufficient power that exists somewhere in spacetime and happens to be coded with our program is simulating us.

They may have trouble isolating it to maintain coherence. I imagine it is orbited by black holes that suck all the incoming particles and information off that could disturb the measurement.